Daily Roundup — Opening Day 2012 (04/05/12)

Toronto and Cleveland went 16 innings.
–It’s the longest Opening Day game, ever, and baseball has been around a long time.
—Benches-clearing in the fifteenth inning, of course.
—-Omar Vizquel was part of a five-man infield at one point. Technically this made him the left fielder.
——Jack Hannahan had the first stateside AL home run in 2012. It was his third Opening Day home run. He has a career 24 home runs.

At one point in the LAD-SD game, the only players with hits were Clayton Kershaw and Edinson Volquez (that is, the pitchers).
–There were not one but TWO home runs in Petco tonight, including a mammoth shot from Cameron Maybin
—-There was only one other home run in the entire NL.

It took 44 innings for there to be a home run in an NL baseball game in 2012.

Via ESPN’s Mark Simon, at one point five pitchers had seven innings pitched with less than two hits allowed–a modern-day first.

2 Responses to Daily Roundup — Opening Day 2012 (04/05/12)

Weirdly enough, that doesn’t mark Vizquel’s outfield debut, though it is his first appearance as a left fielder. On August 31, 1999, the Anaheim Angels, already leading the Cleveland Indians by the score of 7-4 after seven innings, scored five runs in the top of the eighth, and trailing 12-4, the Indians started pinch-hitting for their starters in the bottom of the eighth, beginning by pinch-hitting Alex Ramirez for right fielder Manny Ramirez to lead off the inning. The lesser Ramirez got on, and Jim Thome followed up with a double, and then Richie Sexson drove them both in with a single. Two more singles loaded the bases, but then there were two pop flies before Vizquel came up and hit an RBI single. Roberto Alomar then drove in two more runs with a single, making the score 12-9 and bringing Alex Ramirez up for another at-bat. This would never do, so the Indians sent Harold Baines up to pinch-hit for Ramirez, and after Alomar stole second, Baines drove both of them in. Thome drew a walk, and with Baines at second representing the tying run, they then sent Carlos Baerga in to pinch-run for him. It turned out to be unnecessary as, after a wild pitch advanced both runners, Richie Sexson hit a home run to give the Indians a 14-12 lead. David Justice was then hit by a pitch, and for some reason they decided to send in pitcher Charles Nagy as a pinch-runner. When the team took the field for the top of the ninth, Thome was shifted from DH to 1B and Sexson from 1B to LF (Justice’s position), while Baerga stayed in at 3B, Enrique Wilson shifted from 3B to SS, and Vizquel ended up taking Manny’s position in right.

Truly a game that would’ve been a YCPB classic had the site existed in 1999, what with a team overcoming an 8-run 8th-inning deficit and a shortstop ending up in right field. According to Fangraphs, Anaheim’s win expectancy was at 99.7% after the 2-run double that extended their lead to 12-4, and still at 99.6% when the bottom of the eighth started.

The Vizquel affair points up the arbitrariness that underlies the official stats of games played by position.

What does it actually mean to have played a certain position? If the whole infield shifts around towards RF, so that the “third baseman” is now standing where the “shortstop” normally stands, why isn’t he now considered to be the SS? The logic must be that his position is determined relative to the other infielders. But what if they do a variation on that shift, leaving the SS in his natural position and moving the 3B somewhere in between the SS and the 2B? If the positions are defined relatively, then why aren’t the 3B and SS considered to have switched positions?